The present invention relates to the presentation of structured documents in a hypertext browsing system and more particularly to the presentation of context information for a hypertext page.
Most technical documentation incorporates a hierarchical structure of chapters, sections, subsections, etc. It is known that systems for on-line browsing of structured documents operate most effectively when the user can see where currently displayed information is located within the hierarchy.
Accordingly structured document viewing interfaces have been developed that display two panes, a first pane showing information desired by the user and a second pane showing a table of contents. The location of the information shown in the first pane is highlighted in the table of contents. The highlighted location must of course be updated every time new information is displayed in the first pane. Since the table of contents must be generated in advance for each page of information displayable in the first pane, it is normally very simplified, showing only the largest divisions of the structured document.
It is desirable however to display context information for very large structured documents including many pages and to particularize the context information for each page. It is also desirable that the context information be more detailed than a simple list of the major divisions of the structured document. Generating this information manually presents various problems. The large number of pages means that many man-hours are required to generate the context information for each page. Furthermore, structured documents are frequently updated with additions, deletions, and modifications of pages. These updates render previously generated table-of-contents information obsolete.
Further problems arise in considering the presentation of structured documents across the World Wide Web (WWW) or other network-based hypertext browsing environments. The operator of a web site storing a structured document cannot assume that all users are operating a hypertext browser that provides multiple pane displays.